Middleware Matters

I've been watching the recent SOAP vs. REST debate with more than a bit of puzzlement (especially given the fact that Chris pretty effectively explained why the whole premise was lame to begin with). One on side, I wouldn't call myself a SOAP advocate, but neither am I vehemently against it, as I know that a number of our customers find it useful and it's hard to argue with that. A few months ago I published my opinion of WS-*, stating essentially that I was disappointed with the plethora of specifications but the lack of actual standards, yet I think efforts like WS-Addressing are proceeding extremely well. On the other side, I have also written in the past about the utility of REST, yet I don't think it's the answer to everything as some appear to believe. Rather, as I have written so many many times now, I believe, based on significant industrial experience, that real-world problems require a combination of solutions -- there simply is no single right answer to most problems.

I don't know of many (any?) pure systems that have significantly succeeded in the real world. If you're taking a purity approach in this "SOAP vs. REST" debate, and you've convinced yourself that you absolutely and for sure know the right answer, regardless of which side you're on, then you're either much, much smarter than the rest of us, which is pretty unlikely, or you're just choosing to ignore important parts of the big picture that don't fit with your vision of purity. Either way, you're not really helping yourself or anyone else.

What's also funny about these kinds of technical debates is that people seem to argue from the perspective that the success or failure of a given approach can be boiled down to something entirely technical, when in reality success or failure is often determined almost completely by non-technical forces, such as market effects or social effects. For example, does anyone really believe that the phenomenal success of the Web can be attributed entirely to REST? Does anyone really believe that SOAP has succeeded in certain areas because it's somehow superior to all preceding protocols and approaches?

The always-brilliant Jon Udell sums it up perfectly:

Why must we make everything into a rivalry? Why can't we just enjoy the best of all worlds?

Exactly!